Hill of Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  IV

  ‘Are you sure this is such a good idea?’ said Laurence Savage.

  ‘Nick knows what he’s doing,’ said Abel Glaze, ‘even if the rest of us haven’t the faintest notion.’

  I looked towards William Hawkins for support but he stayed silent. The scheme that the two of us contrived the previous night in the Vicarage Lane house, while fortified with generous doses of his father’s aqua vitae, did not seem so plausible in the cold light of day. The literal cold light, since we were sheltering behind some low bushes near the top of Solsbury Hill. Away from the fuggy air of the city, the breeze blew sharp and clear, and the morning sun was scarcely beginning to warm the slope we sat on. Bath is ringed with hills – they say there are seven of them, just as in Rome – and this Solsbury one is located to the north-east of the city. It is a hill much like any other, distinguished only by an unnatural flatness on top and the even slant of its sides. William Hawkins said that it might have been used in the old times as some kind of fort.

  We had struck out from the town that morning, the four of us, Laurence having established that we weren’t required at the Bear Inn to prepare for our final night’s performance. I’d explained to my friends that we were set to catch some villains who had attacked my new friend, William, and his cousin, Kate. Laurence and Abel might have taken this as a tall story but they’d seen with their own eyes the young woman in the inn yard, together with a male companion. Furthermore they knew I’d been engaged on nocturnal adventures, since I returned to Mother Treadwell’s very late the previous night, or rather in the small hours of the morning. They thought I’d been up to you-know-what again and I didn’t bother to disabuse them of the notion.

  I outlined the situation: the attack in the street, the reason for it; the fact that the villains had stolen a map – or plan, or guide – call it what you will – which they hoped would reveal the whereabouts of some hidden items; relics buried not far from the city of Bath. Hawkins said that he thought his father’s sketch, the one we’d looked at in the Raven tavern, showed the south-western flank of the hill, the one facing the city. Like his cousin, he was of the opinion that Christopher’s crosses and arrows most likely indicated the place where King Arthur had personally vanquished his Saxon enemies, all nine hundred of them. But to a more greedy eye the markings might appear to show the burial places of treasure. We were assuming that whoever was in quest of treasure would waste no time. After stealing Christopher’s book, they would want to make use of it straight away.

  Abel and Laurence were happy enough to join in the adventure. To be honest, I think they were growing a little tired of our stay in Bath. I’ve noticed this before on our summer tours. You spend a couple of days in a place and then you get restless, looking towards the next destination, wondering what pastimes and delights will be offered by the town over the horizon. Abel and Laurence hadn’t experienced the excitements of the city of Bath as I had, and the prospect of smoking out a malefactor or two – with the very remote possibility that buried treasure and King Arthur could be involved – was sufficient to bring them along.

  We left by the North Gate, and passed through an area of wooden houses and hovels that grew more ragged the further we shifted from the walls of the city. We went from lanes to paths to rough tracks, passing orchards and small farmsteads and neat fields, some with sheep grazing. We moved at a slight upward incline until we reached the flank of the hill after the better part of an hour.

  There were few people about and no one at all that we could see on the hillside. By now, Laurence and Abel were openly sceptical about the entire enterprise. Faced with a steepish hillside they talked openly about turning round and going back to Bath. To get them to go on, I had to promise that all the drinks would be put on my slate when we reached Bristol.

  ‘Every day, mind, Nick,’ said Laurence. I nodded.

  So we clambered up the slope and were rewarded at the top with a fine view of the country in every direction. Down below in a loop of the river was the city of Bath, neatly girdled by its walls and lapped by pastures and woods. From here you could hardly recall the odour of its close, stinky air, nor see the mean habitations clinging to its skirts. I breathed deep and looked about with pleasure. I wondered whether this was truly the place where a mighty battle had been fought by King Arthur, whether it was the field where the Saxon enemy had been vanquished. I thought of the little image of the bear in Christopher’s book. Had bears wandered across this place during those far-off days? Who knew?

  Now it was as quiet and peaceful as the day of creation. The only living creatures were small and unassuming. Larks sang high in the air. Rabbits scuttered across the grass. I thought how these rolling hills meant more to me than the others, with the exception of William, since they were not so far from the Somerset village of my birth. William spent some time looking about, like me, pleased to be home again.

  We’d brought some ale and bread and cheese with us. We established ourselves behind a line of bushes that gave some protection from the breeze and through which we could see the west-facing approaches to the hill. We chatted and drank and ate. William talked about Edinburgh, another city of hills, as he described it. He talked about his work as secretary to a cloth manufacturer. He had been present when King James set out from Edinburgh on his long, meandering progress to London to claim the throne. James had promised to return to the Scots capital every three years but he had not done so yet. I told the others the story I’d spun to the Bath watchmen about my familiarity with the King.

  We talked about plays and players in the way – half proud, half mocking – that you talk with your fellows about your own work. Then we fell silent and thought about the wisdom of sitting hundreds of feet up a hillside waiting for the arrival of treasure-hunters, and wondered who was really engaged on a wild-goose chase here. The sun was high in the sky by now and the ale was making me sleepy. Pretty soon we’d have to give this up for the fruitless enterprise it was and return to the town to prepare for our final evening’s performance.

  It was Abel who spotted them first. He jabbed me as I lay at a slant on the grass, squinting at the sun. I sat up and peered through the leaves. In the distance, beginning their ascent, were two figures. Out for a stroll? But who strolls anywhere except a gentleman in a city street or a lady in her garden? These two were about some business. One of them, wearing a labourer’s clothes, was carrying a mattock and spade over his shoulder. The other, better dressed, carried no implements and walked some way to the rear, either because he found the slope of the hill very effortful or to disassociate himself from his companion. In the further distance was a carriage, with a driver left behind to mind it and the two horses. He had been able to steer part of the way along one of the tracks leading towards Solsbury Hill but it was pleasing that the occupants of the carriage were compelled to get out to complete their journey and tire themselves out in the process.

  I was glad that we were right, William and I. Glad as well to recognise two people I knew, enemies not friends. The fat man in the rear was John Maltravers, the merchant and corporation member, and hater of plays and players. The one who wanted us whipped as vagrants. The fellow in front, stocky rather than fat, was the wretch who accosted me in the King’s Bath and most likely attacked the Hawkins cousins in the street. William was peering through the shrubbery beside me. He knew Maltravers, of course. He was able to identify the other man, the one with the spade and mattock.

  ‘That is Rowley. George Rowley. I remember him. He has been Maltravers’ creature these many years. He collects the merchant’s debts, for example.’

  ‘I reckon it was he who attacked you last night.’

  ‘Very likely.’

  Speaking hardly above a whisper I indicated to Laurence and Abel who these gents were. The whispering was instinctive – and not really necessary since the wind was blowing in our direction. We could hear them, though, the wheezing and groans of Maltravers as he strove to climb the slope and the more regular
panting of Rowley.

  Then they stopped at a point between a spur of rock and a clump of stunted oak trees. Maltravers waited for a long time for his breath to come back. From a pocket he drew what looked very like Uncle Christopher’s black book, together with a larger sheet of paper, which he proceeded to unfold. I guessed he’d made a more detailed plan of the area. He consulted book and plan, nodded at his man, strode backwards and forwards a few times before finally settling on a spot where there appeared to be a slight hollow in the grass. Pointing at the place with his stubby forefinger, he marked it with his heel, nodded again at Rowley, then settled himself down on the spur of rock and watched while the excavation began.

  Rowley started to break up the soil with the mattock. We heard the sound of the implement striking the ground, we heard his involuntary grunts when he struck a stony patch. Eventually he’d loosened enough topsoil to start digging properly. The next question was when we should reveal ourselves. William and I had not planned in much detail for this moment.

  In the end we gave them a half-hour or so. I suppose the thought was in all our minds that this was not a wild-goose chase, that George Rowley the digger might actually turn up something. At several points the servant paused and looked in the direction of his master who, with a shake of that peremptory forefinger and a barked command, indicated that he should continue digging. Eventually – quite soon, in fact – the interest of watching a man dig a hole starts to fade. I looked at William Hawkins, who nodded his agreement. Abel and Laurence were already gazing elsewhere, up at the sky, around at the countryside.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ I said.

  From the pouch that I was carrying I extracted four items that Laurence had filched, temporarily, from the tire-chest at the Bear Inn. These were the masks or vizards that had been worn for the lunatic scene in the first play we’d done in Bath, A House Divided. The masks were half animal, half devil. A couple had birdlike beaks, one a snout, the other the suggestion of horns. When they were combined with white smocks and wild gestures and gibbering speech, they proved most effective on stage, as Kate Hawkins told me when we first met. Now we were about to find out whether they’d put the fear of God – or the devil – into a couple of treasure-hunters. It was Kate’s reference to ‘spirits’ lingering on the hill that had made me think of using the masks. We looked at each other through the eye-holes. William Hawkins laughed nervously. Laurence and Abel grinned. This was meat and drink to them.

  We were about to rise up from our hiding place behind the shrubbery when we were halted by a call from below. Rowley must have found something, for he beckoned to Maltravers and then pointed to the bottom of the little pit he’d made. Maltravers levered himself up from his rock and crossed the few yards to the place. He leaned forward, supporting himself by resting his fat hands on his bent knees. One hand still clasped the black notebook and sheet of paper. With his spade, Rowley gestured at some object in the hole. The servant moved back slightly. Maltravers bent forward a bit more. Any further and he might topple over.

  Maybe the same idea occurred to Rowley for he raised the spade in a hesitant manner as if he might give his master a thwack on his rump. Or perhaps he was considering a more final stroke, for he now lifted the spade a little higher. From this position he might strike the merchant round the head. How many years of bad-tempered words and shouted orders and resentment lurked behind that moment? I was almost disappointed when Rowley lowered the spade just before Maltravers looked back over his shoulder. Evidently the merchant was not very impressed with the discovery, whatever it was. Time to move.

  ‘Ready?’ I said to the others.

  We adjusted our masks with their beaks, horns and snouts. We bared our wolfish teeth.

  ‘Now!’ I said.

  The four of us jumped up from where we had been concealing ourselves. With windmilling arms and ear-piercing shrieks, we raced around the bushes and launched ourselves at a downhill pelt. It took Maltravers and Rowley several seconds even to locate the source of all this hullabaloo. It took them several more to respond. Rowley dropped the spade. Maltravers let go of the black book. The sheet of paper fluttered to the ground. They turned and took to their heels, running, if anything, even faster than we were. Maltravers stumbled and fell. He rolled several yards like a barrel before scrambling to his feet once more. Unfortunately for them, the path of their flight nearer the base of the hill led through a patch of boggy ground. Maltravers and Rowley squelched and floundered into this. Neither man showed any concern for the other. They reached the far side of the boggy stretch and staggered towards the waiting carriage. The coachman was staring apprehensively. At least I assume he was, since all I could see was the white dot of his face.

  Meanwhile Laurence, Abel, William and I had halted our pursuit in the region of the little excavation made by Rowley. There was no point in going any further. We had accomplished our task of scaring off these ne’er-do-wells and, into the bargain, we had regained Uncle Christopher’s black book. We would not have wanted to go on with the chase anyway because we were curious to see whether there really was any buried treasure. Also because we were out of breath ourselves, what with the running and our shrieks and laughter.

  I picked up the black notebook and waved it in the air in triumph. We tore off our masks and made gleeful whooping noises at the runaways, who stopped and gazed at the spectacle for a moment before clambering aboard the carriage. The driver turned it as fast as he could – I had hopes it might overturn but it did not – and within little more than a minute they were bumping and rocking down the track in the direction of Bath.

  We turned our attention to the hole in the ground. Rowley’s digging had indeed turned up something. I bent down and picked up what appeared to be part of a helmet. Was I holding a relic of Arthur’s time? Perhaps. But it was made of leather and a strip of rusted metal, which was probably a nose-piece, not an artefact of gold or silver or precious stones. I threw it back into the hole. William Hawkins retrieved the sheet of paper that John Maltravers had dropped in his panic. It was a larger drawing of this aspect of the hillside, with the oaks and the stone outcrop crudely depicted and a cross roughly at the point where we stood.

  ‘Do you think there’s anything further down there?’ said Laurence.

  ‘We could dig,’ said Abel, eyeing the mattock and spade abandoned on the ground.

  ‘It is all a story, a fable,’ said William. ‘There’s nothing there.’

  ‘And we must return to town,’ I said. ‘We have a play to do.’

  A slight sense of disappointment came over us. Into the distance jolted the coach belonging to Mr Maltravers, citizen of Bath. After a brief time we strolled down the lower slopes of Solsbury Hill, taking care to avoid the marshy patch near the bottom. We threaded our way back, past the fields and orchards, through the lanes of tumble-down houses outside the city wall and so on through the North Gate.

  But that wasn’t the end of it, of course. Did you think it would be?

  The play we were performing on our last night at the Bear Inn was A Fair Day. This is a comedy about a summer fair, as the title suggests. Set on the outskirts of London – although I don’t think the city is ever named – it shows a world populated by good-hearted or venal stall-holders, cutpurses, gamesters, fortune-tellers and the like. There are confidence tricksters too, of course, the ones who sell little bottles containing the elixir of life or the infallible prescription for turning base metal into gold, once you have parted with your money. And then there are the visitors to the fair. All these characters are thrown together and left to simmer like the ingredients of a stew until the flavour is rich and rare.

  I was playing the part of a justice of the peace, Mr Justice Righthead, who stalks the fairground looking for breaches of the law in between announcing his determination to close the whole thing down. The idea had already occurred to me that I could slip one or two touches into my performance that hinted at a certain Bath gentleman. I padded myself out around the middle
and practised wagging my forefinger and emphasising my Somerset burr. It was a joke that would only be appreciated by Abel and Laurence, and perhaps one or two of the audience who might be reminded of Mr John Maltravers. It was also a way of exacting a further little revenge on the merchant. There could be no adverse consequences, surely, since we were quitting the town the next day.

  Shortly before we were due to go on, Abel said to me, ‘They’re here.’

  ‘Who’s here?’

  ‘The men on the hill today. Mr Maltravers and whatsisname, Rowley. They’re sitting in the audience.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  I peered through a gap in the tattered hangings that concealed the tiring-room to the side of the stage. On a bench only a few yards away squatted the portly merchant and his servant. They looked disgruntled and battered after the day’s experiences. Furthermore, sitting near to them were two other gents I knew: Edward Downey, the lawyer, and Dr Price. These two wore expressions that indicated they might actually be looking forward to the evening’s entertainment. Also on the benches were the cousins, Kate and William Hawkins. Then, casting my eyes further back towards the individuals standing behind the benches, I noticed the two members of the night watch. I remembered that I’d urged them to attend this evening. But it also came to me that they might be here in some official capacity, perhaps to do the bidding of John Maltravers. I had to remind myself that it was Maltravers and Rowley who had done wrong, who stole Christopher’s notebook and assaulted the Hawkinses.

  ‘Why is he here?’ said Abel.

  By now Laurence Savage was also taking a peek through the hangings. He said to me, ‘I thought you said this Maltravers hates plays.’

  ‘So he does.’

  ‘Do you think they recognised us this morning? Do you think they knew us for players?’ said Abel.

  I shrugged. ‘So what if they did? We are here under licence. They can do no harm.’